One of the horror genre's "most widely read critics" (Rue Morgue # 68), "an accomplished film journalist" (Comic Buyer's Guide #1535), and the award-winning author of Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002), John Kenneth Muir, presents his blog on film, television and nostalgia, named one of the Top 100 Film Studies Blog on the Net.

Thursday, October 04, 2012

Underrated but Great #3: Millennium Season Three (1998 - 1999)

While
generally acknowledged as a brilliant and forward-thinking TV series, Chris
Carter’s Millennium (1996 – 1999) suffers from the same malady as the
original Star Trek. There is a
wide disagreement among fans about the quality and direction of the series’
third and final season.

The
first season and second season of Millennium are each widely (and
rightly) championed, though they feature vastly different visions of Frank
Black’s world.

But
the third season fails to win much love, even though it attempts a fusion of the two earlier
formats. I have never fully understood
this lack of appreciation for the final batch of episodes, especially since the
producers were faced with the difficult task of bringing the series back from
the precipice of apocalypse after the second season cliffhanger.

Essentially,
they had to re-boot the world of criminal profiler Frank Black (Lance
Henriksen) to accommodate for the many
world-shattering changes of “The Fourth Horseman,”/”The Time is Now.”

These
changes included the death of Frank’s wife Catherine (Megan Gallagher), and the
knowledge that the Millennium Group had unloosed a plague upon America, or more
specifically, the Pacific-Northwest.

In
crafting the third season, producers and writers returned Frank Black to the
FBI in Virginia, thus moving away from the series’ familiar Seattle setting and
yellow house (now Paradise Lost).

There,
on the East Coast, the producers and writers gave Frank a young partner whom
Frank could mentor, agent Emma Hollis (Klea Scott). I have always believed that Emma worked
remarkably well as a central character because
she clarified and reinforced the “Frank Black as Father figure” aspect of the
series.

Emma
was someone Frank could teach and care for, and that paradigm worked well,
since it gave Frank room and space to explain his beliefs and philosophies
without his monologues seeming like dull exposition.

When
Emma’s biological father came into the mix, and she had to choose which “father”
to honor, the series reached an emotional apotheosis of sorts. That moral crucible -- in which Emma had to make an unenviable selection -- also
demonstrated beautifully the cunning of The Millennium Group. It would always attack where a prospective
member or enemy was weakest.

The
season-long idea of Frank as Father Figure also tied into the final episode’s
discussion that “we are all shepherds.” A father of course, is very much a shepherd,
and in Millennium we see that Frank actually has two daughters to
shepherd to the light. One -- Jordan -- looks like she’ll make it. Emma, however is, in the end, consumed by
darkness. (Though I always believed and
hoped that once Frank got Jordan safe, he would return for Emma and help her…)

The
other big shift in approach during Millennium’s third season involved the
shadowy Millennium Group. I have seen
how some fans quibble with the idea that the Group is out-and-out villainous. But as I often point out, there was plainly
no other way to play the third season, given the specifics of the second season
finale.

Furthermore,
the decision to feature the Group as the villain makes sense in terms of a
series story arc.

The
overall arc of the series sees Frank learning more and more about the Group,
from first season to third. The first
season is about a romance of sort between the Group and Frank, as he considers
membership. He thus sees only the “good
things” the Group wishes him to see.

In
the second season, as Frank’s orbit brings him closer to membership, he starts
questioning motives and means, and begins to feel that the Group is
manipulative and hiding important information. By the end of the second season,
Frank sees the Group as a dark force trying to “force the end” for its own
agenda.

So
let’s face facts: if an organization engineers and releases a plague on
American citizens, it’s tough to walk that action back.

The
third season follows that arc or through-line, with Frank acting accordingly on
the information he possesses about the Group.

Some
aficionados have viewed this shift to villainy as an insult to the Millennium
Group’s real life inspiration: the Academy Group. But again, it is pretty clear
that by the second season, the fictional Millennium Group of the TV series had
taken off on its own path, and no longer owed its identity to any real life
group or agency.

I
mean, are we to assume the Academy Group was run by an “Old Man” and populated
by doomsday scholars – “Roosters” and “Owls” – who differed on the exact date
of “The End?”

Again,
it is crucially important to note that the shift in the portrayal of the
Millennium Group started some time in
Season Two. So to curse Season three
for legitimately following up on that storyline seems silly and downright
inaccurate.

And
since Frank’s wife, Catherine (Meghan Gallagher) died because of the Millennium
Group’s release of the deadly plague I can’t honestly see how the series would
have worked in any other way but to feature the Millennium Group as the primary
villain.

How
else could Frank have reacted, but to launch a crusade against the Group? Any other response, especially forgiveness, would
have certainly been untrue to Frank’s character at that juncture, and
dishonored his relationship with Catherine.
The Millennium Group cost him his family, and cost his child her
mother. There was no way he was going to
make nice with it, or return to the fold.

In
terms of specific stories, the third season catalog blends season one and
season two style stories, with a mix of naturalistic real-life-style serial
killer/crime stories (“Closure,” “Through a Glass Darkly,” “Darwin’s Eye,” and “Nostalgia,”) and the more horror/fantasy-oriented
fare like “Borrowed Time,” “Antipas” and the creepy-as-hell “Saturn Dreaming of
Mercury.” Those latter titles feel more
like second season offerings to me, on the order of something like “Beware of
Dog” or “Monster.”

In
considering the catalog, it seems plain that Season Three of Millennium
attempts to assimilate what was best about both Season One and Season Two, and
fit those approaches together. In my estimation,
more often than not, the alchemy worked.

Some
folks have also complained about Millennium Season Three that it ages
Frank Black, side-lines him, and at times even makes him look insane. On the surface, this argument is no doubt
true, but if the new dynamic was to be Frank Black vs. The Millennium Group,
then the villain had be strong, and represent a serious threat to Frank, his
family, and his professional standing. The Group was trying to knock Frank further
from his stride, and sometimes it succeeded.

Again,
it’s difficult to argue what Millennium Season Three could have
done much differently here, besides sending Frank on a sometimes frustrating,
sometimes maddening crusade to bring his wife’s killers to justice. The problem, structurally speaking, was that
the series would end once he got the Group so that meant there could never be
any definitive “wins” for Frank.

And
yet, that idea of an ongoing, multi-faceted fight reflects reality and shades
of gray. Victories are few and far
between, and life has a way of undercutting them with new problems and conflicts.

When I
judge Millennium’s third season positively, I think first and
foremost of the following five episodes:

1.“Teotwawki” by Chris Carter and Frank
Spotnitz and directed by Thomas J. Wright.

Millennium
was always
at its very best when tapping into the roiling Zeitgeist of the 1990s. The (then) upcoming Y2K or “Millennium Bug”
problem provided the series with a perfect, real-life doomsday scenario to
explore.

“Teotwawki”
(or The End of the World as We Know It) seemed to tie the 1990s school shooting
epidemic (pre-Columbine) with the Y2K Bug, and then postulate a youth generation
that had lost hope for a better future.

Today,
we know that the Millennium Bug was a dud, but in October of 1998 when the
episode initially aired “Teotwawki” benefited from a sense of creepy
inevitability and realism. In other
words, we were on a countdown already
to this “Doomsday Scenario” -- and knew when it would occur -- but we didn’t
know how it would turn out. “Teotwawki” asks what might happen to kids
living in that scenario of “advanced knowledge of the end,” when disaster is
speeding at them -- and our modern technological society too -- like a runaway freight
train. It’s a powerful hour.

2. “Skull and Bones” by Chip Johannessen and Ken
Horton, and directed by Paul Shapiro.

This third season episode offers two absolutely irresistible mysteries. The first involves a Millennium Group “killing
fields,” in case you ever wondered where all the bodies are buried. The second involves a seer named Ed (played
by Arye Gross) who has, over the years, accumulated notebooks filled with
detailed notes about the Millennium Group’s every move.

I
fully realize the world of Millennium is fictional, and yet
this episode adds much to the series mythology, and makes it all feel frighteningly
real. When I first watched this episode, I wanted more than anything to pour
through Ed’s journals. The promise of
discovering “secret history” is alluring. But beyond that notion, this episode
is powerful because it makes us wonder if Frank is destined, like Ed, to lose
his mind and spend his days alone, isolated, and broken…while the Millennium
Group continues to bury its enemies in unmarked mass graves.

I
admire “Skull and Bones” because it suggests that the Group has had an
unofficial chronicler, one who has seen and understood everything. And in many ways, the third season of the
series very much concerns this notion (and curse) of seers, from the remote visionaries
of “The Innocents”/”Exegesis” to the creepy (supernatural) severed eyes of “Saturn
Dreaming of Mercury,” to the insanity of the percipient in “Darwin’s Eye.” Do we put Frank in this category of “seer?” And if we do, what does that mean for his
future?

3. “Seven in One” by Chris Carter and Frank
Spotnitz, and directed by Peter Markle.

This
episode came near the end of the series and we finally get some clues about the
Millennium Group’s end game: its effort
to drive Frank irretrievably to the brink of sanity. This episode is rife with symbolic imagery but
offers no clear answers in the text itself. The episode is electric with
anticipatory anxiety and a mood of looming paranoia. If the episode is to be understood
successfully, one must literally dissect the assort images, from birthday cakes,
butcher knives and a flower in bloom, to the climactic flood which “washes over”
Frank and bring him new knowledge. You
can read my full review of the episode here.

2. “Bardo Thodol.”
Written by Virginia Stock and Chip Johannessen, and directed by Thomas
J. Wright.

This
multi-layered tale, I believe, visually and thematically encodes an important
way of interpreting or “seeing” Millennium. You can read more about my specific theory
regarding this episode and its importance to the overall canon by purchasing
the just released Back to Frank Black book. I spell it all out there, but suffice it to say that this episode -- for all its delicious opacity -- is a critical
one in analyzing the series’ big picture.
On the surface, the episode concerns strange science, but beneath that narrative
there is a thematic obsession with the Tibetan Book of the Dead that reveals
something critical about Frank’s journey and how, as viewers, can experience it.

1.”The Sound of
Snow” by Patrick
Harbinson and directed by Paul Shapiro.

This
installment is another opaque, hard-to-interpret installment, but one that
proves highly-rewarding. A mysterious
sender is delivering static-filled audio tapes to victims. These unusual tapes induce hallucinations in
listeners and ultimately lead to death.
Frank receives one such tape and finds himself reliving the outbreak
near Seattle, and having a last encounter with his wife Catherine.

Again,
this is a pivotal episode of Millennium because it represents the
point in season three wherein Frank can purge his feelings of guilt, and finally
put the past behind him. It’s a haunting,
deeply-affecting hour, and my personal favorite from the third year.

Other
episodes in the catalog deserve an “honorable mention too, from the post-modern
“Thirteen Years Later” to “Matryoshka.”

If
the former episode is a meta-analysis of slasher films and celebration of all-things
horror, then the latter is certainly an expression of deep fear and anxiety
over the Human Genome Project, which the episode specifically compares to atom
bomb testing in 1945. Nuclear science
and genetic science are both parsed as Pandora’s Box, here, and both involve
the idea of playing God.

So
far as I can see, the only genuinely sub-par episode of Millennium’s final season,
is “Human Essence,” a story about drugs and human/animal chimeras that fails to
gel, and which places Millennium and The X-Files in separate
worlds, since The X-Files is seen playing on television during one scene.

When
I re-watch Millennium’s third season, I reflect that the final batch of episodes, from
“The Sound of Snow” to “Goodbye to All That…” descends into a creepy ambiguity
that, while confounding for lack of answers, significantly deepens the
story-line, and rewards multiple viewings.
There is so much imagination and artistry in these shows it’s a shame
that more fans don’t try to engage with them on their own terms.

Some
viewers may dismiss these episodes as falling into baffling, David Lynchian, Twin
Peaks territory, but, I would assert that Millennium in its final
chapter lives up to its potential as described perfectly by X-Pose
Magazine in June of 1999:

“Millennium
has at least become a clear
artistic success, making sense out of an often chaotic, disturbing world with
consummate intelligence and powerful emotions.”

9 comments:

I couldn't agree with you more. Season 3 happens to be my favorite season of Millennium, very underrated as you point out. I too enjoyed the relationship between Frank and Emma. Some fans complained that it reminded them too much of Mulder and Scully, but there dynamic was completely different than the one between Emma and Frank.

Also, the Millennium Group had no course to take in the third season but become the evil group. That was long planted in middle part of season 2 and at the end. Where else would they have gone with the group?

I agree as well that the writers were backed into a corner when they came back for season 3 after the ending of season 2. I think once the season hit its stride, it was fantastic television.

Thanks for pointing out that Season 3 is fantastic television and will always be my favorite season.

Great, great spotlight on a season I, too, love. Especially for Klea Scott teaming with our Frank Black (Lance). I think each of the seasons went in directions you, as a viewer, couldn't anticipate (whether there was a plan or scheme that ultimately painted the producers into a corner or not). It's the results that came across on the screen which mattered. It's too bad this was the final set of episodes for these two actors in MILLENNIUM -- one for Lance's stellar work he accomplished and the potential Klea could have brought to the series. Thanks, John.

Another great inclusion in this enjoyable series, John—naturally!—and a very worthy addition it is, too. I agree with pretty much everything you have written here, including citing "The Sound of Snow" as a high point in Millennium's third year.

That's a tantalising teaser to your third essay in "Back to Frank Black", and I will go further by saying that another thread to this article—that of the narrative direction taken with the Millennium Group—is explored in great depth in the volume, including some insights from the very creative minds that were shaping Millennium's third year. I will say no more—everyone will have to read the book!—but it's a fascinating subject, and "Back to Frank Black" contains some content that complements and expounds further upon some of what you have said here.

Great stuff! Though definitely having a preference for season one (see Lamentation and Maranatha for how to play the idea of supernatural evil) I too am a fan of the third season. My only big quibbles, Human Essence aside yeccch, are how they wrote their way out of the plague and the incredibly atmospheric Skull and Bones with such heavy handedness. Side o' the road machine gun slaughter and a medieval torture chamber? At least in season two the Group had a smug air, though I guess if you think the end time's around the corner, a few marbles are bound to roll out. But what do I know, I actually like Omerta, heh.

Well structured and notated assessment of the approach to Season Three. I agree with you:

A. The Millennium Group as villain was the right way to go as much as we hated seeing Peter become an enemy. I have no quibbles with the approach to Season Three as far as substance.

B. The alchemy worked more often than not and I think that is entirely fair to say. It was simply that the fusion made for something different from those first two seasons. I think it's noticable but I also think any good series needs to change.

You make a great point about context regarding the time this series aired and the power of it during that period. So true. Fortunately, the material is still quite striking and surprisingly, the writers did a nice job of presenting the material in such a way as to avoid becoming dated. No small trick for a series called and happening at the dawen of the new Millennium.

And boy so many terrific visual moments awash in beautiful cinematography throughout the series. That flood was something in Seven In One.

Finally, I'm a big fan of the "haunting" The Sound Of Snow. What a powerful piece of television. As I reflected in my post recently, those final episodes are amongh the best to be sure.

Season Three ultimately is as good as Season Three's come! Ultimately, as you note, these episodes are left to considerable interpretation, analysis or reflection and they do remain rewarding when tiem is taken for additional viewing. Perhaps that is why all three seasons work so beautifully in their own right. The rewards are plenty in each. Together, they really do present new viewers with an opportunity to really immerse themselves in a splendid series with a fantastically imaginative story and mythology. This is terrific art.

I didn't care for the agent Frank was partnered with because it took the show into a more traditional TV cop show area--which seems to have been the point. Season 1 led naturally to season 2, but I thought season 3 was a retreat from something that could have been something really different. Season 2 ended with the greatest edge-of-apocalypse storyline...and season 3 said "Well, that really wasn't all that important." I liked that the Group became villains, not so much because of anything they did differently but because Frank LEARNED what they really were--they didn't become evil, they were always working toward something that was going to be bad news. I wished they'd made sense of CCH Pounder's character (good guy, villain, good guy without explaining the villain part) and made HER Frank's co-star. The X-Files wrap-up episode was a real waste of time.

right up there with the series finale of "angel" is the final 2 eps of "millennium".back in 2009 i saw every ep many times on chiller since they played 2 or 3 a night ,2 times each ,for the entire year. i like em so much i made my xbox live gamertags "lucas barr" and "ed cuffle" :D

About John

award-winning author of 27 books including Horror Films FAQ (2013), Horror Films of the 1990s (2011), Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), TV Year (2007), The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007), Mercy in Her Eyes: The Films of Mira Nair (2006),, Best in Show: The Films of Christopher Guest and Company (2004), The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi (2004), An Askew View: The Films of Kevin Smith (2002), The Encyclopedia of Superheroes on Film & Television (2004), Exploring Space:1999 (1997), An Analytical Guide to TV's Battlestar Galactica (1998), Terror Television (2001), Space:1999 - The Forsaken (2003) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002).

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